This is where I got my first hearing test, almost seven years after noticing that I had an issue. It’s in Düsseldorf. I remember going for a slice of cake afterwards as a consolation prize, since I couldn’t afford the hearing aids.

Content warning for medical terminology for deafness

In 2005, I moved to Essen in Germany after 11 years in Wrocław. I needed to move for a few reasons, but it wasn’t an easy decision. Like many autistic people, I don’t love change and any move is a huge upheaval. This one was especially complicated because it was international and I was initially sleeping on a friend’s sofa rather than in a place of my own. Furthermore, my health wasn’t good (which was one of the reasons for the move) and my finances weren’t of a German standard for the first few months.

All that said, moving to Essen was a net positive experience. I had immediate access to the healthcare I needed. Wheelchair accessibility was better. I didn’t have to hide my queerness: the gay bars in Essen and neighbouring cities were inviting locations with menus, street-side beer gardens and big windows, rather than being hidden away and focused on alcohol. They weren’t cruising grounds that I could never fit into; they were places to meet friends and have a laugh.

And then there were the Hörgeräteakustiker: the audiologists with shopfronts all over town. They were easily as common as opticians, with six or seven in the centre of Essen. Having your hearing tested and possibly getting hearing aids was treated differently in Germany than anywhere else I’d lived. As much as I dislike the word normal, that’s the best way to describe the German attitude to hearing aids.

It was the first time that I’d felt that I could get my hearing tested. I wouldn’t need to convince anyone that it was important or even talk about it with other people. I could go in, make an appointment — maybe even get to see one the same day.

It took me a while and happened after I’d moved from Essen to Düsseldorf. I’d gotten used to ignoring my hearing problems and working around them. I think with all the other health issues that I had, I was also afraid what I might discover. But eventually, I made an appointment. It was all very easy: a twenty-minute assessment of my ability to hear tones at different pitches. Every time I heard a tone, I needed to squeeze a button. The result was an audiogram, which maps the frequency of a sound (think from bass to treble or rumbly to whiny) against the hearing difference (usually called hearing loss), measured in the decibel level at which you can not detect that sound.

Apologies for the language on the audiogram: the medical industry standard talks about hearing loss rather than hearing difference and “normalcy” as a category. It’s hard to find something that doesn’t use this language, but I do intend to replace this as soon as I can.

The results were clear: confirmation of severe tinnitus; a moderately severe hearing difference on the right side; and a moderate hearing difference on the left. They recommended hearing aids, but we came up against a problem: my health insurance would pay €500 per hearing aid, but they cost €2,200 each. I didn’t have savings or anyone who I could rely on at the time, so I had to say no. Loans were frowned upon in Germany: banks would give “delayed debit” cards that had to be fully paid off by the end of the month, but not real credit cards unless you were basically rich enough not to need one; overdrafts were awarded after a complicated assessment of your purchasing power and other debts; and bank loans went through much the same process. I was nowhere near established enough for them to entertain such a conversation with me.

So that was that: I had an answer after just under seven years. I didn’t know what to do with that answer yet, but now that I had proper, reliable internet access, I was determined to research ways that I could either get hearing aids or not need them. Cue the diversion…

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